Does your little one love playing with water?

It is no secret that young children love water. They love touching it, scooping it, pouring it, splashing it…you name it! In order to address this interest, encourage repetition, and support developing concentration in purposeful work at Studio June, we have designed a water transfer activity. For those of you who attended my presentation at MTIPs last summer, you saw this activity in action. And for those of who participate in our classes at Studio June, you know the joy your children experience with this activity. You can set up this activity in your kitchen, or outside.

Purpose: to fill the water jug with fresh water

Skills: carrying a pitcher with two hands, filling a water pitcher, pouring through a funnel, wiping up a spill

Points of interest: watching the water fill the jug, the sound of the water filling the pitcher and the jug, using the water source, finding puddles of water to clean up

Set-up: the empty water jug is placed on the tray.The funnel is placed in the water jug, the small pitcher is placed on the tray.You may want to add a rug under the tray to help with spills.

Across the room, the ceramic dispenser goes on the low table and the basin and grate go under the spigot.The sealed water jug goes on the water dispenser.

Notes:

The purpose is to fill the water jug and the idea is the children clearly see the purpose of the activity to keep the water source filled. I DO NOT use the water the children add to the jug as drinking water.I use this water to water plants after the children leave for the day.Many other things fall in to the water and the children sometimes drink it on their way to fill the jug, so in order to keep the water source clean, I only use freshly filtered water in the water source.

I always keep a filled and sealed water jug on top of the ceramic water dispenser (the water source).To fill the dispenser, I take the sealed jug off, pour filtered water into the ceramic dispenser, and then place the sealed water jug back on top.The sealed water jug helps to weight the water dispenser, keeping it stable and controlling the amount of water used during class.

Ideally, the children would fill the empty water jug from a low sink.The water dispenser is used because we do not have access to a low sink.